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CVE-2026-33634: Aquasecurity Trivy Embedded Malicious Code Vulnerability

CVE-2026-33634 is rated critical with a CVSS v4.0 base score of 9.4 and affects Aquasecurity Trivy, along with 2 other products in NVD’s configuration data. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available. CISA added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2026-03-26, which means exploitation in the wild has been observed.

Vulnerability description

Trivy is a security scanner. On March 19, 2026, a threat actor used compromised credentials to publish a malicious Trivy v0.69.4 release, force-push 76 of 77 version tags in `aquasecurity/trivy-action` to credential-stealing malware, and replace all 7 tags in `aquasecurity/setup-trivy` with malicious commits. This incident is a continuation of the supply chain attack that began in late February 2026. Following the initial disclosure on March 1, credential rotation was performed but was not atomic (not all credentials were revoked simultaneously). The attacker could have use a valid token to exfiltrate newly rotated secrets during the rotation window (which lasted a few days). This could have allowed the attacker to retain access and execute the March 19 attack. Affected components include the `aquasecurity/trivy` Go / Container image version 0.69.4, the `aquasecurity/trivy-action` GitHub Action versions 0.0.1 – 0.34.2 (76/77), and the`aquasecurity/setup-trivy` GitHub Action versions 0.2.0 – 0.2.6, prior to the recreation of 0.2.6 with a safe commit. Known safe versions include versions 0.69.2 and 0.69.3 of the Trivy binary, version 0.35.0 of trivy-action, and version 0.2.6 of setup-trivy. Additionally, take other mitigations to ensure the safety of secrets. If there is any possibility that a compromised version ran in one's environment, all secrets accessible to affected pipelines must be treated as exposed and rotated immediately. Check whether one's organization pulled or executed Trivy v0.69.4 from any source. Remove any affected artifacts immediately. Review all workflows using `aquasecurity/trivy-action` or `aquasecurity/setup-trivy`. Those who referenced a version tag rather than a full commit SHA should check workflow run logs from March 19–20, 2026 for signs of compromise. Look for repositories named `tpcp-docs` in one's GitHub organization. The presence of such a repository may indicate that the fallback exfiltration mechanism was triggered and secrets were successfully stolen. Pin GitHub Actions to full, immutable commit SHA hashes, don't use mutable version tags.

Severity breakdown

CVSS v4.0 9.4: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network.
Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
Attack requirements: None. No deployment or execution conditions are needed.
Privileges required: Low. A basic user account is enough.
User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
Confidentiality impact (vulnerable system): High. Total loss of confidentiality.
Integrity impact (vulnerable system): High. Total loss of integrity.
Availability impact (vulnerable system): High. Total loss of availability.
Confidentiality impact (subsequent systems): High. Total loss of confidentiality on other systems.
Integrity impact (subsequent systems): High. Total loss of integrity on other systems.
Availability impact (subsequent systems): High. Total loss of availability of other systems.

Underlying weakness

CWE-506: Embedded Malicious Code

The product contains code that appears to be malicious in nature.

Affected products

Aquasec Setup Trivy: before 0.2.6
Aquasec Trivy: 0.69.4
Aquasec Trivy Action: before 0.35.0
Litellm: 1.82.7; 1.82.8
Telnyx: 4.87.1; 4.87.2